‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
71st teaching
4.14.2013
“How did we get
Christology?”
Do you remember the movie Groundhog Day? It was a comedy in which
Bill Murray plays an egotistical and grumpy weatherman named Phil who relives
the same miserable day over and over again: February 2nd, Groundhog
Day. He eventually realizes, after abusing the same day for hedonism and after
trying to kill himself numerous times (even kidnapping the groundhog Punxsutawney
Phil and initiating an epic car chase that results in him careening off a
cliff), only to find himself waking up every morning on the same morning—that
he is in fact doomed to spend an eternity watching the same people do the same
thing every day. When reporting on the same Groundhog Day event for the
umpteenth time, Phil says dejectedly: “I’ll give you a winter prediction: It’s
gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your
life.” Finally, the breaking of the time-loop occurs when Phil learns to use
his time to help others and to care for others beyond only himself. Note: what
broke the loop was learning something.
It has been said: “History repeats
itself”. And it certainly does. Even the Bible agrees with such a statement
when it says “That which has been is what
will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new
under the sun” (Ecc 1:9). But
while history repeats itself, we needn’t necessarily go along for the
repetitive ride. We needn’t suffer the same shortcomings and errors that those
before us suffered. How?
Well it is also said “Those who don’t
know history are doomed to repeat it.” And like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, there’s a kind of way we
can escape the repetitiveness of history, by learning about history and about
the mistakes and victories of those who came before us.
Now let me make the admission that I’m
a little apprehensive here of diving straight into some church history right at
the start of our study in Christology. I’m no historian, and after all, what
could possibly drag a boring idea of theology down to new levels of boredom
than history?
However, as much as I tried to avoid
it (and believe me I struggled with how to approach this study), it seems as if
this is what I’m supposed to teach for our second entry in this new series: a
look back at the past development of Christology.
You might say to yourself: “Ain’t
nobody got time fo’ that!” Well, I’m sorry, but you’ve got to make time for
this. We must only remind ourselves that it is those who don’t know history who
are doomed to repeat it. God forbid that’s us.
God forbid we find ourselves splitting
churches over questions solves centuries ago. God forbid we find ourselves
losing our faiths over seemingly difficult questions which may have been
sufficiently answered by the great theologians of the past. God forbid we find
ourselves slipping into the tempting heresies and false teachings such as the
church already rejected hundreds of years ago. See how vital this actually is?
We would be fools to fall into the same traps that our Christian ancestors
perhaps fell into themselves. As Aldous Huxley, English writer of Brave New World, once said: “Most human
beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That men
do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all
the lessons of history.”
So then, I’ve entitled my reluctant
message: “How we got Christology”. How did we get the central Christian
teaching about Jesus Christ? Was it, as the opponents say, invented by the
church? Is Jesus a figment of a Christian imagination? Was Christ a figure
borrowed from myth and pagan religion? Or is the Christian teaching on Christ
something which has developed through discovery out of the Word of God? We’ll
take a brief look at the early centuries of Christianity and how the various
doctrines and teachings were discovered in Scripture and laboriously shaped
into the Christian teaching we know today.
In order to further justify a
discussion of history, and in order to reassure ourselves that this is a bible
study and not an academic history course, I’m pleased to ask you to turn to Ephesians 4. We shall find a word here
for our basis for tonight’s study:
“I,
therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling
with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with
longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity
of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
So right away we understand that Paul
here is talking about unity in the church. This would of course be a major
issue in the early church as it struggled through its first years in defining
its teachings. Imagine how important unity is to our church in our day, but how
much more vital it would be for those first generations of Christians who were
just getting the New Testament put together, who were just reading it for the
first time, who were coming out of all kinds of backgrounds and cultures where
they’d never once heard of Jesus Christ, where they did not have the luxury of
a whole wealth of Christian teachers and commentaries and books before them
such as we have today.
v.4,
“There is one body and one Spirit, just
as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one
baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in
you all.”
The apostles words almost read as a
kind of creed, a statement of central beliefs. And certainly these are central
Christian beliefs, several things which point to Christian unity. Christians
might all come from different cultures and nations, from different ethnic
groups and languages, live in different areas of the world and different
periods of time, but the Church is one body, the single Body of Christ. And
there is one Spirit, the Holy Spirit, within each Christian. And we all have
one hope and one faith; the same Lord and the same God and Father. There may be
several things which separate Christians (denominations, customs, methods of
worship or teaching, even beliefs) but at the core of every Christian life lie
these essentials. You cannot be Christian without these and if you are a
Christian, then you necessarily share these core beliefs with other Christians
no matter who they are.
More could be said on that, but we’ll
move on:
“But
to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
Therefore He says: ‘When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and
gave gifts to men.’ (Now this, ‘He ascended’ —what does it mean but that He
also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is
also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all
things.) And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some
evangelists, and some pastors and teachers…”
So though we are one body, there is of
course diversity within this body: different jobs and different gifts. For what
reason? Why are there different functions?
“…for
the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of
the body of Christ…”
That’s why my job is right now as the
teacher of this college group. I’m to help equip you for your ministry, and I’m to edify and build you up. But note: I’m not
the only Christian here. It is incorrect to think that only the teacher, or
only the pastor, has the responsibility of equipping and edifying. That is
something that occurs not just from the pulpit, but also from the pew. The
congregation, you guys yourselves, have a responsibility to equip and to edify
each other, and to equip and edify me too! We’re all in this together and the
body functions together.
“…till
we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that
we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every
wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of
deceitful plotting…”
Key verse there!
“…but,
speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from
whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies,
according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes
growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
“This I say, therefore, and testify in the
Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the
futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated
from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the
blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over
to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so
learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as
the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the
old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in
the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created
according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
“Therefore, putting away lying, ‘Let each one
of you speak truth with his neighbor,’ for we are members of one another. ‘Be
angry, and do not sin’: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give
place to the devil. Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him
labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give
him who has need. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is
good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do
not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of
redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put
away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.”
As I mentioned, a key verse there for
our concerns tonight was v.14. Our modern world is full of bad theology, full
of errors, full of wrong ideas about Christ and full of cults that would just
love your subscriptions. Maybe you know someone who just seems to bounce from
one religion to the next, from one idea to the next, from one doctrine, from
one conspiracy, from one theology to the next.
The early church knew that danger and
if we learn their history we can steer clear of that danger ourselves, and not
be like children entertained by this thing and that thing, the next new thing,
the next flashy speaker, the next new doctrine or heresy, the next new movement
of falsehood, the next new reinterpretation of Christ.
To avoid being tossed to and fro,
we’re briefly considering Christian history and we’re aiming to study
Christology as a whole. Our goal is orthodox Christianity. What is orthodox.
What does that mean?
I’m currently enjoying reading through
Bruce Shelley’s Church History in Plain
Language. It’s a book I got in bible college and I recommend it. In it, he
writes: “Many modern Christians would rather not discuss the central teachings
of Christianity. They are not sure that ideas about religion—or theology—are
all that important. ‘I love flowers,’ a minister once said, ‘but I hate botany;
I love religion, but I hate theology’. This widespread attitude often springs
from good reasons. Theology can be dull, or much worse, it can be ruthless. In
Christianity however, the answer to bad theology can never be no theology. It
must be good theology. God gave us minds, and he surely expects us to use them
in thinking about His truth…
“When we err in our thinking we call
it heresy or bad theology. Heresy is not necessarily bad religion, but like all
wrong thinking it may lead to bad religion. Heretics, in fact, served the
church in an unintended way. Their pioneering attempts to state the truth
forced the church to shape ‘good theology’—a rounded, systematic statement of
biblical revelation.
“Good theology [is what is called]
orthodox…”
We’re aiming for good theology,
orthodox Christianity, correct thinking about Christ in our Christology. The
history of correct Christology can help keep us on that path.
We have several points to touch upon:
1. The Primary Source
2. The Historical Source
3. The Anchor of the Soul
1.
The Primary Source
How did we get Christology? The
first answer to that question is: from the Bible.
Any Christology must have the Word of God as its foundation.
I don’t care which pastor says what or which church teaches this or that,
unless a doctrine can be found in the Bible in some form or another, you cannot
call it correct Christianity. This applies to every Christian teaching. It
applied during our study of God’s attributes and that’s why we always began
with God’s Word and made effort with Project Scriptura to search the Scriptures
for those verses which taught on each specific attribute. It’s absolutely
essential that our concept of God be shaped by what God says of Himself.
This is no less true than in the case of Jesus Christ. In
fact, it might even be more
necessary. As I mentioned last week, the point of deviation and disagreement
between true Christianity and every cult and false religion is on the Person
Jesus Christ. You might believe that we’re one body, you might believe that
there’s only one God, but if you believe something wacky about Jesus Christ
(such as Him not being God or Him having been created by God or Him never
having existed) than I’m sorry but you can’t be included under the name
Christianity.
After the New Testament, there is no further revelation of
Jesus Christ. The doors are closed. Nothing can be added to the New Testament
portrayal of Jesus Christ. There are no new doctrines. All that any church or
teacher can do is clarify what has already been said in Scripture.
Christology is a science, but there are no inventions in
it. There is nothing really new to be done in it. However, that does not
exclude discovery.
Bill Nye, the science guy, recently talked about the Joy of
Discovery in his debate with Ken Ham, about the excitement of learning about
and discovering some new thing in science. Last week, we defined Christology as
the “science of Christ” and though there are no inventions in Christology there
are certainly discoveries. We can discover what the Bible has always said about
Jesus Christ.
That alone gives us a pretty good idea of the nature of
Christology’s development through history. With all the arguments, all the debates,
all the councils held, and all the theologians doing their theology, there was
no invention taking place, only discovery. What was accomplished at the Council
of Nicaea, which you might remember from last week, in rejecting Arius’
statement that Jesus was created by God was not something the council invented
but something they collectively discovered to be true in Scripture.
*Now since the Bible is the basis for Christology, the
foundation for knowledge about Christ, you might begin to understand the strategy
of so-called scholarship today in trying to undermine the validity of the
Bible. The modern claim is that the Bible is unreliable, that the gospels are
bits of hearsay and legend mixed together, written by people who never saw the
events they purportedly record.
By attempting to destroy the Bible’s reliability, enemies
of the faith are trying to systematically destroy knowledge of Jesus Christ,
Christology. If the gospels can’t be relied upon and if the New Testament is
fake, we would never know that Jesus said “Come unto Me, all you who are weary
and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”, we would never know that His
crucifixion at the hands of the Romans and at the accusation of the Jews offers
salvation to the world, we would never know that He walked on water, healed the
sick, fed the hungry, cast out demons or rose from the dead and ascended into
heaven. What could we possibly know about Jesus other than the bits of
information that appears here and there in the writings outside of the Bible?
Now this is something we’ll have to return to at a later
date, the idea of the reliability of the gospels and the historical evidence
for Jesus Christ, but for now we’ll leave it here. At this point, we’re merely
stating that the primary source of Christology is the Bible, the gospels and
the New Testament. Everything beyond that is peripheral: the teachings of the
church, the decisions of councils, the records of historians. The Bible forms
the very basis for Christology.
So the development
of Christology begins where it should: with the New Testament. Where does it go
from there?
2.
The Historical Source
Though all of the Christian teachings are self-contained
within the New Testament, how do you get from it to the unified and orderly
system of theology we have today? This is where the discoveries of the
Christians of the past come in to play. The teachers of the past have labored
over the same New Testament, discovering what was said about Christ here and
there and then put it all together into the system we understand in our time.
There are a great number of things we could discuss
concerning the development of Christology through the many centuries since the
completion of the New Testament, but we’ll have to content ourselves with
talking about two things here: the Councils and the Monk. These two things were
pivotal in church history so far as developing a complete and correct
Christology goes.
First let me tell you about the Councils.
During the first 500 years of church history, Christianity
had several councils. These were meetings held by the bishops and pastors in
order to address issues that concerned their churches. The councils contained
various speeches and rebuttals given by either side of the debate, and
documents and records kept. In fact, we know much of the doctrine and heresies
in the early church based on the records that these councils kept.
Of these many councils, there are a few known as ecumenical
councils. The term ecumenical means universal or all-embracing or all-inclusive.
Basically, the ecumenical councils were those meetings that were formed by
leaders from all of the Christian churches in the world (at that time, in the
Roman Empire). In fact, the very first ecumenical council was called for by the
Roman emperor himself who had converted to Christianity, the Emperor
Constantine. The main purpose of these massive councils was to help the church
through disputes and arguments about correct Christology. So the councils
played an important role in the development of Christology in rejecting error
and in discovering the truth of God’s word for all of the churches involved.
Now as I mentioned, once the New Testament closed, there
was no new doctrine to be made. The decisions of these councils in the early
church are not inspired or binding in the same way that the Word of God has
authority over the Christian life. However, some of what they agreed upon are
things that we can still agree upon.
I found this quote on Wikipedia: “…conformity to the
decisions of these councils is therefore considered purely voluntary and the
councils are to be considered binding only insofar as those doctrines are
derived from the Scriptures. Many of these churches reject the idea that anyone
other than the authors of Scripture can directly lead other Christians by
original divine authority; after the New Testament, they assert, the doors of
revelation were closed and councils can only give advice or guidance, but have
no authority. They consider new doctrines not derived from the sealed canon of
Scripture to be both impossible and unnecessary whether proposed by church
councils or by more recent prophets…”
So the councils didn’t invent truth, nor did they really
decide truth, but they discovered truth and proclaimed it.
Let’s get a brief overview of the first four ecumenical
councils of the first 500 years of Christianity:
The first one ever is the same one we talked about last
week, known as the First Council of Nicaea which was held in 325AD. As we
discussed last time, this council was held because of the growing teaching of
Arius which argued that Jesus Christ was not co-eternal with God the Father,
but that Jesus was created by God before the world.
The First Council of Nicaea laid the smackdown on Arius,
literally, and exiled him. They rejected his doctrine, known as Arianism, and
declared that Christ is of the same substance as the Father, just as much God
as the Father, which laid the groundwork for developing the doctrine of the
Trinity. In order to help spread the true teaching they created the Nicene
Creed and distributed it to the churches.
The Creed contains the words: “I believe in one God, the
Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and
invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God
from true God, begotten not made,
co-substantial with the Father; through Him all things were made.”
*The second council is known as the First Council of
Constantinople, held in 381AD and called for by the Roman emperor Theodosius.
This council met in part because the council before it did
not totally put an end to the Arian controversy. So they approved the Nicene
Creed and reaffirmed it. But they not only had to deal with finality with the
heresy of Arius, but a new heresy had arisen and a new Christology debate
needed to be had.
A young pastor of the church of Laodicea (little surprise
there) named Apollinarius and his teaching was essentially a questioning of
Jesus’ humanity. Apollianrius proposed that Jesus could not have a human mind,
but only a human body. He believed that Jesus’ mind was a divine mind.
But don’t the gospels portray Christ as having a normal
human psychology, not knowing the day of His return, growing weary and tired,
suffering emotional pain and sorrow and actually dying?
That’s what the council at Constantinople realized.
Apollinarius’ teaching was condemned as heresy, as abandoning the literal
interpretation of Scripture and as a theory inadequate to explain the
Incanation. Arius denied Christ’s full deity and Apollinarius denied His full
humanity. Both concepts were rejected by the church and it was decided upon
that Jesus was portrayed in Scripture as fully God and fully man.
*After that, the third council was held, which was known as
the Council of Ephesus in 431AD.
This council was called because yet another heresy was on
the rise. A man named Nestorius had reportedly begun to teach that there were
two separate persons in the incarnate Christ, a disunion between His human and
divine natures. Nestorius teaching made it appear as if Christ joined two
persons together, the divine God and a human being.
What kicked off the controversy was when Nestorius rejected
the title Theotokos (Mother of God) for the Virgin Mary, a title which the
church had already begun to apparently become fond of. What proceeded at the
Council of Ephesus was what one historian called: “one of the most repulsive
contests in church history” because of its concern with power politics in
church leadership in the empire.
But this is a great example of God’s grace. Even though the
council was ugly in fighting over politics and petty in the rivalries of men,
and really even though there are many who think that Nestorius never even
really got so far as heresy, the council did end by proclaiming that Jesus
Christ was incarnated as God in man, not as two separate persons, but as one
complete union as per Scripture.
*The fourth and final council we’ll discuss was the Council
of Chalcedon in 451AD.
Yet another
heresy was on the rise, one which threatened to destroy the whole Christian
doctrine of redemption. A man named Eutyches had begun to teach that Jesus had
only one nature (a belief known as monophysitism), that the human nature was
completely absorbed by the divine nature in Christ, that His humanity is lost
in His divinity.
But if this were true, then Jesus Christ could not die, and
certainly not suffer and die on a cross for our sins.
The church thus sprang upon Eutyches and the Council of
Chalcedon agreed upon the statement “hypostatic union”, the humanity and the
divinity in one state and substance in Christ.
So we have four councils.
Nicaea in 325 rejected Arius and said Christ is fully
divine, fully God.
Constantinople in 381 rejected Apollonarius and said Christ
is fully human, fully man.
Ephesus in 431 rejected Nestorius and said Christ is a
unified person, not two separate persons.
And Chalcedon in 451 rejected Eutyches and said Christ is
both human and divine in one person.
The councils certainly dealt with other issues and had
their flaws, but they served as a guide in an age of confusion when true
Christology ran the risk of being derailed by an influx of new ideas. The
development of Christology went through a kind of refinement through these
councils, like ‘em or hate ‘em, they helped shape Christian teaching for
generations to come by discovering exactly what the Bible said about the Son of
God.
*Now I need only mention the second of two historical
things that helped shape Christology. We talked about the Councils, now let’s
briefly discuss the Monk.
The Monk was none other than the Italian priest-philosopher
Thomas Aquinas, who died in the year 1274AD. Though he lived during the middle
ages, a time that would become consumed by myths and superstitious beliefs,
Aquinas was actually the first to come up with a complete systematic
Christology.
His approach to Christology would become known as
“Christology from above” or High Christology, meaning He began with Christ’s
divinity and then proceeded to His humanity. In contrast, other schools of
thought formulate “Christology from below” or Low Christology, beginning with
Jesus humanity and then going on to show how that Man was actually God. Both
approaches are important. Our own approach to Christology will be a kind of
fusion of High and Low Christology. As we learned with the councils, both
natures in Christ are biblical and important.
Aquinas’ approach to theology was also an extremely
rational and extremely logical approach. It’s been said of Aquinas that he
never completed his greatest work the Summa
Theologica, a summary and compendium of all the main theological teachings
of the church, because he finally experienced a revelation of God so incredible
that he wrote no more, leaving his great work unfinished. He said “The end of
my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw
after the things that have been revealed to me. I can write no more.”
Good for him! Rather than live the rest of his life in a
kind of cold intellectual observation of God, Aquinas came to actually
experience Him. He actually died three months after this experience he had.
Yet his work, though straw, remains beneficial and
influential in the development of Christology through the ages. Theology may
not have been the same had Aquinas never begun the undertaking of compiling
Christology, but certainly Aquinas met God and himself was never the same.
We can learn a tremendous lesson from his life alone.
Theology is great, folks, but it is not the same thing as God Himself. And
knowing about God is great, folks, but it is not the same thing as knowing God
Himself.
3.
The Anchor of the Soul
Hebrews 6:19-20 says “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and
which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for
us, even Jesus…”
All the world is a vast ocean of crashing waves and every
believer is a ship upon the dark surface of the turbulent waters. Where will we
anchor ourselves to remain afloat but in the promises of God in Jesus Christ?
There are so many things in this life that can just wipe us
out, capsize us and drown us. You can drown in all the worries, all the
anxieties and the stress and the struggles. Or you can have hope in Christ and
let that be the anchor of your soul.
Psalm 39:7 says
“But now, Lord, what do I look for? My
hope is in you.”
We often sing the hymn that goes “Prone to wander, Lord I
feel it, prone to leave the God I love” because we recognize the restlessness
of our hearts, our fleshly desires to wander and chase after what we want to
chase after, rather than to pursue Christ. We want to put ourselves first,
rather than Jesus, and in doing so unknowingly destroy ourselves just as surely
as a ship will destroy itself if it never uses the anchor.
Like ships, like children, we can be tossed about with
every wind of doctrine. We saw how the early church decisively, sometimes
ruthlessly, avoiding the dangers of heretical doctrines, of wandering away from
the real Christ.
Now we cannot perhaps be that ruthless and that decisive in
our modern times in dealing with heresy and in dealing with wandering from the
real Jesus… except for in our own hearts. We can’t hold these massive
ecumenical councils and denounce and send heretics into exile, but we can
denounce the wandering lusts of our own hearts into all the temptations, all
the falsities, all the errors that the world holds before us.
Tonight we’ve learned in a nutshell how we got Christology,
but tonight I’m also encouraging you about how you can keep Christology, how
you can continue to center yourself upon Jesus Christ and never wander.
Friends, obsess yourself with Him. Learn from Him. Hear His
Words. Read your Bibles “religiously”, with all that that suggests: daily
devotion. It isn’t called devotion merely for the sound of it. It’s called
devotion because it is done out of devotion.
If you’re depressed tonight, if you’re preoccupied with the
lusts of the flesh, if you’re downcast in life, it’s time you put your hope in
God and looked at Jesus Christ. It is time we learned from Christian history
that wandering from the real Christ should be dealt with suddenly and even
viciously in the arena of our own hearts. Call
a council of the "bishops" of your own heart and deal with the sin in
your life with the same immediacy, ruthlessness and decisiveness that the early
centuries of Christianity knew.
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